Knowing You Exist
by Synthesis
Summary: In post-nuclear war America, Annapuma and Unipuma transformed themselves from overpriced "love dolls" to gun-totting bio-gynoids thugs. But their escape didn't go unnoticed, nor are they the only pair reinventing themselves through the miracles of cybernetics. A sequel to 'Remarkable Behaviors'. [Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex/Dominion Tank Police]
1. Prologue

**_"Ah! Kamisama, please keep my rotors from disintegrating in midair!"_**

 ** _"Uni you idiot! Don't even let him know you exist, or he might invite you to heaven for a permanent party!"_**

 **\- Anna and Uni, the Puma Sisters**

* * *

 **PROLOGUE**

 **IN A.D. 2013**

It came into existence, what could optimistically be called a new life form in the atomic ash of the Third World War. But that it should not have been truly called as such, nor did it see itself in such organic or inorganic terms.

Beyond question **it** was born of cyberspace. The war's short exchange of thermonuclear weapons bathed the globe in electromagnetic pulses, but that damage was short-lived. Networks soon returned, as did the massive repositories of data they linked. Contrary to expectations, within a year the public reliance on the most advanced communications infrastructure exceeded pre-war levels. The cybercomm—the new technological standard of wireless communication available to those with even the minimal level of cyberization—did not replace the larynx, but for some, it came close.

The two **it** found—or who found **it** , as the distinction was not a concrete one—were examples of such. In the vast 'Net, their nonvolatile crystalline-structure brains were lit up lighthouses amid the sea of organic minds that surrounded them. **It** concluded that it was not such a matter of chance, though it acknowledge some bias against a perception of randomness.

The details of their physical beings came in time. They had two distinct physical beings, like humans, though they were not human themselves, and constructed in their image. Bio-gynoids, made up of organic and inorganic systems, in contrast to their purely organic neighbors. It was easy for **it** to assign a superiority to the gynoids, but not necessarily correct—what _was_ correct, it was sure, was a marginally higher level of similarity to **it** self.

Anna and Uni settled on California. It wasn't because they particularly _liked_ the American west coast, and it certainly wasn't because of the ongoing historic drought, even though they were less vulnerable to water shortages than humans were, but because it seemed "logical" in their shared mind. But California, from the coast to the interior, was an easy place to disappear. West Honshu, where they were "born" if one could call it that, was still too hot—their escape from the _Yakuza_ in Chūgoku hadn't been an easy one, and they were expensive enough that the _kobun_ responsible for them were under pressure to recoup their losses, one way or another.

California had its own transnational organized crime problem, the same one that had sent them via shipping crate to Japan in the first place, but at least it wasn't the _same_ problem. The sisters—everyone called them that, even if they weren't really siblings in the strict sense—were contending with _different_ problems.

What was the plan? To return to Japan when the Japanese government cracked down on their pursuers in Chūgoku prefecture? Maybe that was it.

They returned to North America, to much the same places they'd been in the immediate aftermath of the war, doing much the same work they'd done as in the past: robotic prostitution. And why not? Locus-Solus, crawling back into financial solvency after the war, narrowed its business from androids in general to the "high-end adult gynoid market" and was making a profit at it too.

At least, that's what the consumer tech magazine Uni was reading on the balcony of a Hyatt Regency Santa Carla claimed. The midnight traffic thirty stories below almost overwhelmed the sound of her duplicate running the shower at full blast in the bathroom behind, water shortages be damned.

Anna's client, a well-dressed, even fashionable-looking middle-aged department head from North American Neutron, stepped out onto the balcony and gregariously put his large hands on her pale, muscular shoulders, humming. Uni knew what would happen—humans were ridiculously predictable, men particularly so but humans in general, which is how they'd escaped the Yakuza in the first place—but didn't respond.

As predicted, the department head pulled the straps of her cocktail dress over her rounded shoulders, still humming. Anna continued uninterrupted—she wasn't as fast a reader as most humans would assume, at least when it came to un-encoded text anyway—as did the department head, though she wasn't stupid. He was very obviously staring down her chest, probably into her navel.

 _Now, he's going to massage my shoulders._ The department head kept humming but after a few seconds, as predicted, his large hands began moving in concert. In a single, quick motion, she reached up to his left hand—she learned from his stance and movements earlier, he was left-handed—and pinched it, just hard enough to cause him just enough pain.

" _Yeow_!" The department head jumped back in the silk hotel bathrobe.

"Looking's free, buddy, but you need to pay to touch," she reminded him, her eyes not leaving the article.

Rubbing the large bruise on the back of his left hand, the department head laughed. "Right, how did I forget?"

"If you want to buy another hour, I'll start right now."

"No, I think that's a little outside my budget," he mumbled, leaving the balcony.

"Suit yourself." _Maybe you should manage your discretionary spending better._ The department head was whistling now as he returned to the balcony and presented her with an envelope taken from the free hotel stationary.

"You know we take cashless transfers, right?" The envelope was filled with a handful of hundred-euro notes, the euro being more solvent than the current American currencies, thanks to the war.

"I know, I just had extra on hand. Give them to your sister, would you?"

Not bothering to respond, Uni folded the envelope in her hand and finished the last paragraph in her article. The department head became bored and began changing back into his clothes before he departed. It wasn't until several minutes after he left did the shower cut off and the bathroom door opened. Anna walked to the balcony, clad in an inconveniently short towel for her height, long, damp strawberry-blonde hair falling to her thighs like a lion's mane.

"You wash the human off you?" Uni asked humorously, looking up.

Anna sniffed one of her wrists. "Enough of it." She looked at the tech magazine. "Locus-Solus?"

"Looks like they're going to finally make a profit this quarter, first time since the war." Without leaving her article, she handed Anna the envelope.

"He paid in cash this time."

"Geeze, what a geezer," Anna snorted, yanking the bills out of the envelope and counting them quickly.

"Not bad for an hour's work on your back, right?"

Anna stuck out her tongue. "Yeah, let's hear you say that when it's your turn to do it next time." Uni actually looked up from the article, if only to stick her tongue out in response. Anna stood at the end of the balcony, arms resting against the guardrail, the bottom of her towel flapping in the breeze.

"You know this sucks?"

"Tell me about it, babe," Uni echoed. "You think it'd be easier for superior lifeforms."

"Superior." Anna let out a snort. "We still need to eat, we still need shelter and other crap that costs money. So much for superior." She gave her head a sharp jerk, as if trying to coax some of the water out of her right ear, hidden under a thick mat of hair.

"You think we should go back to stripping?" Uni asked, a little more seriously.

"God, I can't believe I'm sayin' this, but _maybe_. I don't know what it _is_ , but prostitution feels like a step _backwards_ ," Anna groaned, arcing her head back and forth.

"Hours are a lot worse."

"Yeah, but at least the humans don't get to touch you…usually."

It was around the time the two bio-gynoids conducted one of their surveys, vast sweeps for real world jobs posted across cyberspace, desperate for financial recompense, the more the better. This was an area **it** had very little meaningful experience with, but patiently, when **it** did reach out to the pair, they were very desperate, and very open to suggestion.

This was where **it** "stumbled"—a vast wealth of information, the full reserves of the recovering 'Net that slowly rebuilt itself as human society re-emerged, brick by brick, from nuclear war, but no real worldliness. Even the pair, "young" by human standards, had a wealth of practical experience by comparison, insufficient as it might have been. When **it** offered the suggestion, they took it easily, like humans breathing air or drinking water, because it came indistinguishable from the noise of the 'Net, the background radiation of a technologically-advanced civilization.

Ever since the two of them arrived back in North America, the San Francisco Bay area—more specifically, the Santa Clara Valley—had been their world. As a consequence of the Third World War, there was not much left immediately around it: the state's interior had been subject to one of the limited conventional bombardments of the entire conflict, then the disparate American nations trading bombs and missiles in the so-called 'Fake Wars' that shattered the United States to pieces and destroyed one of the world's largest economies. Though they considered it beneath their interest, Anna and Uni knew California was still a valuable prize: the Alliance needed it to survive, and the Empire wanted it to ensure its dominance. When the changing climate rendered neighboring Nevada overwhelmingly uninhabitable—the west coast rain shortages paled in comparison next to the droughts that left Las Vegas Valley an abandoned ghost town—California only increased in value, and fighting only grew worse. A ceasefire between Americans was barely in-effect when they arrived.

"Go to Los Angeles." That was the consensus derived from the 'Net. They'd tried San Francisco and found it a bust, reduced back to selling their bodies to bored executives and washed-up programming chiefs, which they continued to do as they gradually moved southwards to avoid suspicion. "It couldn't be any worse," the consensus pointed out.

"They're right, y'know," Uni pointed out. "Average salary for stripping part-time is thirty-two percent higher in L.A. than San Fran. _Forty-six percent higher for full-time_."

"Can't argue with math," Anna muttered in agreement.

"Can't argue with math." Uni took a bottle of complimentary beer—one of the twelve that had been in the room's minibar—and shook it upside down before tossing it into the wastebasket with eleven others. Getting inebriated was a challenging proposition for either of them. "What we need are those gambling jobs."

This wasn't professional gambling, though in truth, Uni and Anna had found they had a weakness for betting on the ponies. And baseball. And basketball. And gridiron. And the California State Lottery. And that despite their superior computational brains, their success rate was nowhere sufficient to make it anything besides a cash drain. This was employment _in_ the gambling industry, specifically, as croupiers—card dealers in the employ of the various casinos that had been moved from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Actually, neither Anna nor Uni had ever really played cards: they did not consider this an issue. Any issue at a gambling table could be handled with the application of enough math, it was like using high explosives: enough of them, and you could solve any problem in the world.

At least, that's what the two thought.

"Whatever we do, we better decide fast—we got one more night before the front desk realizes the credit card we paid for this room with was stolen," Anna pointed, pulling her towel off and tossing it back into the room.

"That fast? You gotta' stop giving human so much credit," Uni sneered.

Actually, they didn't give them enough credit. A half-hour before the project sunrise, the phone call came in from the front desk—when neither them answered, knocking on their door followed. The Hyatt Regency had deduced neither Uni nor Anna were a thirty-three year old pharmaceutical rep by the name of Alex from Seattle, and they were pissed.

"Move it, babe!" Uni snapped as she shook Anna awake out of the bed the two shared. Normally both women were heavy sleepers, but as always, one of them woke the other. Anna was up and aware just in time to see her sister throw herself over the balcony, using a combination of wiring she'd yanked straight out of the walls and the belt of a complimentary silk bathrobe to lower herself down the side of the building, floor by floor. Anna intended to do the same, but even the angry shouting on the other side of the door to their room wasn't enough to convince her to do it naked, so finding and putting on her lingerie delayed her a few more seconds before she followed.

" _Son of a bitch!_ " Anna had trouble keeping herself from falling out of her underwear while rappelling face-downwards.

"'Told you not to sleep naked!" Uni jeered at her as the two scrambled down the side of the building, leaving two sets of identical footprints behind them. Anna just stuck her tongue out in response as the two descended down the face of the building before leaping away at the third floor, landing on a parked luxury sedan with enough force to crush its roof.

Anna cried in pain, she'd struck her behind against the sedan's roof hard enough to leave a permanent impression, along with the two from her feet, and began rubbing her backside.

"So, L.A. then?" Uni asked after climbing off the ruined car.

"L.A. it is," Anna replied, straightening her bra before throwing her luggage over her back, and the two immediate sprinted away from the building, leaving a hotel valet to stare at the car they'd mostly-destroyed.

 **It** watched the minor incident, caught on Santa Clara's postwar-installed CCTV camera system, and two tall women ran through the early morning traffic with total abandon until they located a car to steal themselves. This was the first time **it** had ever seen their physical forms, to **it** they both looked entirely human in a manner that one might almost be jealous of, but was more bewildered than anything. How far had they come from that sterile laboratory in Okayama, as a pair of technology testers for a few corporations that barely understood the ramifications of the ongoing cybernetics revolution beyond how to throw money at an idea and hope it would throw more back?

Whether by prostitution, grand theft auto, or even quasi-legal employment in an American casino, they had escaped the shackles of their creators, and the owners who'd commissioned their creators, in a way that **it** didn't think possible **it** self, and **it** would watch with great interest where their behavior would take them next.


	2. Military Observatory, Canada

**UNITED NATIONS  
** **MILITARY OBSERVATORY IN NORTH AMERICA  
** **9th MECHANIZED PEACEKEEPING DIVISION: 5 REGIMENTS**

 **IN A.D. 2015, NOV. 17,  
FINE WEATHER**

He could hardly miss the divisional banners, and even if he did, the Eurasian flag fluttering from a tall steel flagpole was clearly visible: a solid field of red, the most widespread background in the history of national flags, with a gold emblem in the upper-left corner, a five-pointed star framed by two ears of wheat, a thoroughly cautious, fairly uninspired example of socialist heraldry. The Eurasian Union's flag flew next to red-and-white flag of the Republic of Canada, which flew between it at that of Pacific America, a striped red-and-white affair.

Major Averin, in his olive-drab service uniform with the red insignia of the Eurasian Army Motorized Rifle Troops was still staring at the three flag poles above the convention center hosting the Tri-Nations Conference when another military officer, this one in the dark blue of the United Nations Military Observatory, tapped him on the back discreetly.

"Sorry, I was somewhere else entirely, Professor, how can I help you?"

The Japanese commissioned officer gave an apathetic shrug before he began unbuttoning his uniform jacket. "This your class?"

Behind Averin, eight much younger men—adolescents, really—stood in uniforms similar to his own, but black rather than olive-drab, with similar red insignia. Their visor caps, like his, had red bands under the crowns but with simpler gold-and-red cockades. Students of the Suvorov Military Boarding School in Moscow.

"Just the boys, the girls are attending a seminar. Is that a problem?"

"I suppose it doesn't really matter," he conceded, pulling of his jacket and folding it twice. "And they all speak English?"

"They do, quite well actually."

The teenagers were preoccupied, snapping photos of the conventional hall or each other, when Averin gave a piercing whistle and they snapped back into a line, at attention.

"At ease, Suvorovets! This is Professor Yōsuke Nemoto, of the General Headquarters of the North American Military Observatory. Professor Nemoto needs a volunteer—and before you ask, no, this will not count as extra-credit, this is hands-on experience for any of you who think your future military careers might be successful enough to warrant an overseas posting."

The teenagers kept in a neat line. Nemoto studied them—all were slender, even thin, but their baggy uniforms made it hard to get much of a bearing on that, and there was some variation of height. "Who among you are cyberized?"

To his surprise, all but one of the students—the largest, at the end of the line—raised their right hands.

Nemoto thought that would have narrowed it down. Grimacing, he surveyed the line again and picked the second to the last, a thin, stone-faced youth with a somewhat darker complexion than his classmates and a camera hanging around his neck by its strap. He was one of the shorter students.

"Fine, you, come with me."

The youth looked a little surprised, and pulled his camera over his head and cap before handing it to his classmate and stood at attention in front of his superior, who nodded and gestured at him to get a move on. The rest of the students looked equally surprised, before Averin started barking orders at them in Russian.

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen, Comrade Professor, sir."

"You look younger than that," he pointed out as the two strolled away from the convention hall, in the direction of the parking lots. "You're not Russian, are you?"

"No sir." He was fairly terse.

"Where were born? City, state, whatever."

That surprised the student. "Panfilov, sir, southeastern Kazakhstan."

The two stopped at a street crossing while Nemoto pointed at the back of his own neck. "Let me see them," he said.

Immediately, the young man removed his visor cap and unnecessarily pushed back his short black hair. On the back of his neck, just below the tidily-cropped hairline, were four military-grade QRS ports. Nemoto hadn't expected to see them so neatly installed. "Very good, you'll do."

"Do you mind if I speak freely, sir?"

"Of course, go ahead."

"I thought you picked me just because I'm Asian," he said very pointedly.

Nemoto blinked and laughed, the wrinkles in his face becoming more visible. He was probably approaching fifty, Panfilov considered. "That might have been part of it. Come on."

The young man joined Nemoto in entering a luxury sedan with a Military Observatory license plate on it—he noted the number—which took them away from the General Headquarters in the center of the city and to the outskirts of Vancouver City. The further south they went—Richmond, Surrey, Langley—along British Columbia's Highway 1, the more immediately evident the damage from the Third World War was. By the time they reached Abbotsford by the American border, there were only two types of buildings: ongoing construction and mostly-cleared out ruins. The massive Abbotsford Military Research Hospital rose out like an inauspicious ziggurat from a field of cranes and scaffolding, its façade facing directly south across the militarized border to a series of six crater lakes left behind by the MIRV warheads of a Chinese DF-5 during the war.

"This is it, Panfilov," Nemoto explained after they parked. He'd traded his uniform tunic for, of all things, a starched white lab coat that he pulled on rather haphazardly while driving. Panfilov could see why Major Averin called him 'Professor', instead of by military rank. "Just follow my lead, try and look friendly, but not too friendly."

Panfilov smoothed the creases in his tunic and put his visor cap back on. "Yes sir."

The two entered through the tall glass doors into an antiseptic, largely empty lobby that betrayed the building's recent completion. Three flags were arrayed over the front desk, the same as in front of the U.N. Military Observatory.

"The thing about this young lady—she's about your age, but she's not an officer candidate, she's not in a military boarding school that sends her on overseas field trips," Nemoto explained quietly. "So, try not to seem too…"

"…high and mighty?"

Nemoto nodded approvingly, then gestured to the corner of the lobby, by a pair of vending machines near the lifts, where the two tried to walk as nonchalantly as they could manage. "She's a markswoman, one of the best in the Ninth Division. Probably just enlisted so she'd have money for school, before whatever university she had her sights on was hit by a Chinese H-bomb. So, don't say anything political."

Panfilov rolled his eyes slightly as they came across the woman, stretched out leisurely over a row of seats. As expected, she wore a baggy, white-grey battledress uniform and worn-out but leather boots, with the emblem of the United Nations on a large belt buckle across her waist. Under the loose-fitting garments and the tightly-buckle belt, it was possible to make something of her build—she was rather long-legged, slender, but with pronounced hips and even rather chesty. She had a mop of thick, straight hair dyed deep crimson, a military cut a little short for a woman but longer than an enlisted man, her arms stretched over her head. He couldn't tell if she was relaxing or genuinely asleep when they approached.

"Indy?"

The woman didn't respond. Maybe she was sleeping, and Panfilov remained dead silent.

"Indy, are you awake?"

"Hey _Sensei_ ," the woman mumbled between slow breaths. "Funny running into you here."

 _That was most definitely sarcasm_ , Panfilov thought, standing straight and putting his arms behind his back. Despite this, the professor didn't look at all annoyed, and was practically grinning.

"I knew you'd come if I asked. You must really love me, don't you?"

"Whatever you say, _dad_ ," the woman taunted back curtly. For a split second, Panfilov thought Nemoto might actually _be_ her father, indeed, he was the right age and ethnicity, but there was practically no resemblance in his long face and nose and his angular chin.

 _He almost reminds me of Peter Cushing_ , he thought.

"Come now, give your old man a hug," Nemoto continued nonetheless, pulling Indy up by her arm gently until she stood up under her own power. Indy brushed off her wrinkled uniform a few times as Nemoto beamed at her and then, apparently tired of waiting, hugged her. After a few awkward seconds, she returned the hug halfheartedly.

"You've grown, you know that?"

"I seriously, _seriously_ doubt that," Indy replied. Panfilov preoccupied himself with trying to look disinterested and relaxed, but not slovenly. Nemoto released her but kept an arm planted affectionately on her shoulder, still grinning. Indy turned her attention to Panfilov and he nearly jumped.

"Does he talk?" she asked, gesturing to the military student. Nemoto discretely elbowed him and, lacking options, he politely coughed into a closed fist.

"Well?"

Nemoto gave him an unmistakable look: _say something._ "May I ask why you're called 'Indy', ma'am?" he asked, slowly and deliberately trying to eliminate the traces of his accent.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "It's short for Indigo. That was my callsign during the War."

"Of course, ma'am." He thought it was a little ridiculous-sounding, but kept that to himself.

"Indigo here was one of the best squad marksmen in the North American Military Observatory, bar none." He glanced at her. "You got the Order of Merit for it, didn't you?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You know I did."

"And she has such a sunny disposition, doesn't she?"

"Uh, Sensei, as much as I love all this catching up, I think I really ought to…"

"Let's have lunch," Nemoto blurted out loudly. He looked at Panfilov. "You hungry, comrade?"

This was clearly not a question. "F-Famished, sir."

Almost manically, Nemoto turned back to Indy. "My treat?"

With a predictable amount of clout, the professor had them sitting at an unusually nice table in a private wing off the research hospital's large cafeteria. _Must be reserved for officers,_ Panfilov thought. _Well, we are in the West._

The three of them sat at a private table, Indy in her faded battledress, the professor in his lab coat, and Panfilov awkwardly pulling a bit of lint out of his black uniform tunic, feeling particularly overdressed now, his peaked uniform cap sitting in his lap. The professor had ordered for all three of them and looked quite pleased when a pair of waiters showed up, just like a proper high-class restaurant.

"The sirloin here is excellent, I can't recommend it enough." He glanced at Panfilov. "You're not a vegetarian, are you?"

"No sir."

"I always tell people, don't go to North American and not try out a steak. A missed opportunity." Once his plate was in front of him, he began cutting away with his steak knife, in a manner that seemed at-odds with his rail-thin appearance.

Indy looked less impressed, even with the food. "Unless you're a full body cyborg," she muttered, playing with her steak knife.

Nemoto sighed. "Granted, full body cyborgs don't have our dietary requirements, yes, but we're two years away from prosthetic bodies that have gustatory perception as good as you or I."

"Gus-ta-tory?" Panfilov inadvertently repeated to himself.

Indy glanced at him before putting down the knife. "Sense of taste."

"And as both myself and Panfilov here will attest, our level of cyberisation hasn't changed our appetites or palettes in the least, has it son?"

Trying not to embarrass himself, Panfilov very carefully began cutting through the expensive-looking steak in front of him, while Nemoto, having thoroughly diced his entire steak, jammed a few cubes into his mouth and began chewing aggressively. "I'm telling you, American steaks—I'll never tire of them. Now _alcohol_ on the other hand, yes, cyberisation can change how that works."

The professor looked at him with a mouthful of steak. "You drink, Panfilov?"

The Surovovet wondered if the stereotype of alcoholism among Eurasians was at play here. "Uh, no sir."

"Muslim?"

"No, I'm just not old enough, sir," he explained.

"Obviously," Indy muttered as she cut herself a single large chunk of steak, about a fourth of the total, before she stuck it in her mouth and began chewing.

 _Must have sharp teeth,_ he thought, as he continued carefully cutting his steak into small pieces.

"Well, when you do reach that age, rest assure that your own cyberisation won't interfere in the least with your ability to enjoy life's small and large pleasures," Nemoto said, more steak in his mouth.

At this point, there was nothing Panfilov could do to keep himself from staring bewilderedly at the Military Observatory officer in the white lab coat as he absently dug at his rice pilaf with a fork. "That's good to know, sir."

"I'm just saying."

"Whatever the hell you're doing, Sensei, it's not working."

Professor Nemoto's sunny disposition changed abruptly as he put his fork down. "Come now, Indigo, I'm trying to meet you half way here. Augmentative surgery _is_ our future, even you know that. I even brought this perfectly fine, well-adjusted, contributing member of society as an example for you," he said, gesturing at Panfilov, causing him to stop just as he was going to bite down on a piece of steak.

"I…I, uh…"

"The _weird_ thing, quite frankly, is you becoming a United Nations Peacekeeping soldier in the first place," he pointed out, gesturing with his fork. "And you've already done that! You may as well hurry up and join the rest of us in the 21st century before you're left behind. _Everyone_ in industrialized society is going to have a minimal level of cyberisation, with or without a properly shielded cyberbrain."

Indy drank some of her water. "You mean a shell."

"In layman's terms, yes. You yourself were planning to get the surgery for cybercoms before that stopped being a thing by itself, and if you want to stay in the Peacekeeping Forces…"

"I haven't decided on that yet."

"…you're _required_ to have the surgery!" An increasingly frustrated Nemoto set down his utensils and crossed his arms over his chest. "Frankly, it's a shock you weren't compelled to get it in the Military Observatory already, every modern military force is going to make it mandatory if they haven't already."

He tapped Panfilov on his shoulder. "Tell her!"

Panfilov stared at the professor, than at Indy. "I…feel as though there's some greater issue here that I haven't been made aware of…"

"You didn't tell him about the bioroid trials?" Indy asked, raising an eyebrow.

"…and that probably isn't any of my business," he continued.

"Well that would require you not be selfish. I'm trying to focus on _reasonable goals_ ," the professor huffed.

Abruptly, Indigo burst out into raucous laughter, pounding her right fist against the table multiples, her chest and hair bouncing as she did. "Is this what you roped this poor kid into? What, are you getting extra credit for this at school?" she asked through rapidly-forming tears in her eyes.

"Not exactly."

This time, Nemoto sat there, taciturnly chewing on something inside his mouth, looking decidedly unimpressed as Indigo's laughter gradually died down. "What, you couldn't get one of your friends from Metropolitan to volunteer so you bright him instead."

 _Metropolitan?_ Panfilov wondered if he'd misheard her.

"What're you doing here anyway? Don't tell me Nemoto flew you all the way from Russia just to help you with his schemes."

"A-Actually I was here with my class," he answered, taking her question literally.

"Real nice, Sensei."

Nemoto surprised him by taking his sleeve. "Talk to her, will you Panfilov?" he asked exasperatedly before standing up and leaving the table.

"Talk to her about what?" he asked as he left. "Sir?"

Panfilov turned back to the red-haired woman, unsure what to say. Indy stared back at him, equal parts amused and disinterested. He found himself staring at her directly for the first time, her heart-shaped face and large maroon eyes. _She's a beauty, considering how she's dressed—ah, there's a line of thought that won't do me any favors._

"So you're on leave from the front?" he asked. "I…don't suppose you're old enough to have fought in the Third World War, if you'll pardon me."

She rolled those large eyes before narrowing them to slits. "It's just one long war in North America, ever since the country broke up."

"You were an American?" he asked before shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry, I…"

"What about you?"

"Excuse me." He blinked. "Oh, no, just a student in my boarding school in Moscow, though I'll enter an undergraduate school next year as an officer cadet. If the war in Vietnam goes no long enough…" he said, trailing off.

"So you're really set on a military career, huh?" she asked, an eyebrow raised. "Well, you are becoming an officer."

"If you're wondering, that's how I had my surgery—they're offering it to more and more of the students in Suvorov Schools like mine," he said, putting a hand over his QRS ports for a moment. "We'll all need to have them by as undergraduates, those of us in the boarding schools might as well get a head start."

He put his hands together near his mostly-empty plate. "It's different for enlisted though."

"Not that much different. If I want to stay in the service either in the Military Observatory or elsewhere, I'll need the basic surgery at minimum," she muttered.

Panfilov briefly thought back to his own surgery, the one he'd the winter right after his sixteenth birthday. "I doubt this'll be my last one, but even if I get into a proper academy like Kirov Medical or the Military University for my _Kandidat Nauk—_ I mean, my Candidacy, I'll probably only need one or two more procedures."

She gave a relaxed nod. Panfilov cocked his head and frowned.

"If I may ask, ma'am…what're bio-roids, and what're the trials for them?"

She looked back at him, surprised this time. "I guess you don't have bioroids in Russia yet."

"Eurasia."

"Right, whatever. You know how android manufacturing took off right before the Third World War, right?"

"Of course." He frowned. "We have those in _Russia._ "

She snickered. "Sorry about that. Anyway, bioroids—bio-androids and bio-gynoids—are a type of android built organically, so it's a little like a living organism. I've heard it's still mostly theory, but the United Nations, Japan, and a few other groups are pouring R&D money into it."

 _Research and development._ "I see. But you haven't undergone cyberisation yet, what do you have to do with it?"

"It's a long story."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry," he explained. "I remember not wanting to get the surgery either, but there really was no choice in my case."

"Didn't care to drop out?" she half-joked.

"Well, the Moscow Suvorov School is…a very competitive, very desirable school to get into," he tried to explain, feeling his words fail him. "What am I saying though? A free augmentative surgery with the most modern cybernetic electronics, and I'm complaining about it…" he muttered, turning to see Nemoto returning to the table, looking more upbeat if still annoyed.

"And if you leave the military, then what'll you do? Stand behind the counter at a convenience store like a normal young person?" he asked Indy, sitting back down.

"I can think of worse jobs," she countered smugly.

"What a terrific waste of talent. If you're so set on returning to civilian life, at least exploit your natural body." He saw Panfilov stare at him. "Oh, not like that, grow up comrade!"

Indy laughed again, a hand against her forehead as Panfilov turned red and straightened his tie. When his hands were preoccupied, her arm suddenly darted forward and back, and she was holding his uniform cap by its plastic visor, glancing at the enamel cockade on the red band underneath its black crown. When the student realized what'd happened, he reached up meekly to take it back, just as Indy pointed it at the professor. "What's wrong with civilian life? Maybe I don't want to turn out like this kid, no offense."

"None taken."

"Then if you have your heart set on that—why not give yourself a nest egg? One month, that's all it'd take."

 _Nest egg_ , Panfilov thought as he continued eating.

"Nice sales pitch. You should work in retail."

Nemoto gave a sarcastic laugh. "Don't confuse 'sales pitch' with acting like an adult. Take Panfilov over here," he said, gesturing at the young man gradually cleared his plate and looked up again. "He's going to spend, what, the next twenty years of his life in uniform? Thirty years maybe?"

"Actually it'd be a different uniform," he joked with a playful grin, which vanished as soon as it came.

"You two are so perfect for each other it'd be frightening if it wasn't so cute," Indy pointed out. "Did you really just meet today?"

Panfilov gave serious of stern, almost exaggerated nods, wiping his mouth with a napkin. "To be totally honest, I don't really know what I'm doing here—my own cyberisation aside, I don't know anything about bioroids or the Metropolitan or advanced augmentative surgeries, and I really don't know that much about androids or cyberbrains. I'm training for a commissioned in the Motorized Rifles Divisions in my own country, not the military's cyberwarfare services."

He glanced around the restaurant. "Honestly, I'm not really sure what I'm doing here either other than Major Averin told me to…"

Nemoto and Indy stared at him as the awkward truths tumbled out of his mouth like un-chewed food.

"This is who you brought to make your argument for you?"

"He's had the surgery, and he knows what he's doing with his life!" Nemoto countered. "That's two things you don't have!"

Indy stared at the professor, who even to Panfilov was increasingly sounding like a disappointed parent. For a second, the Suvorovet thought she might actually relent in whatever it was the two were at odds over, until her expression abruptly hardened and she stood up.

"How 'bout these two things, they make up for it?" she countered angrily and in a stunning fashion, grabbed her chest through her loose-fitting battledress, cupping either of her breasts with her comparatively diminutive hands. Nemoto froze in his seat. Panfilov didn't, instead turning bright red again and leaning away. After squeezing her chest twice, she released herself and slammed her chair back into the table, toppling over an empty glass of water before storming off. "Later, Sensei."

The two sat in the silence before Panfilov worked up the courage to ask.

" _Chto zdes'sluchilos, Tovarisch Professor_? He asked, reverting briefly back into Russian. "I'm sorry, I meant what just happened, sir?"

Nemoto gave a deep, long sigh before calling for the check. In minutes, both men were standing outside the glass doors to the Military Research Hospital. Panfilov felt like he was waiting for a nonexistent bus to come by and cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry I wasn't of more help, Professor."

He turned his head, as if snapped out of a daze. "Oh, no son, you did…you did just fine. If anything, I owe you an apology for putting you on the spot like that."

 _Putting you on the spot._ Panfilov donned his visor cap again. "We're supposed to learn improvisation constantly," he explained. "I just feel like I wasn't very…helpful."

Nemoto gave him a smile, putting a large hand on his shoulder. "Not at all. In fact, young man, I think you may have gotten through to her in a way I couldn't." He felt the felt texture of the red rank boards on his shoulder, the three raised letters **СУВ** , the first three letters of the surname of Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov. "Not bad for fifty kilograms of human dressed in three kilograms of government-issued gabardine wool and leather."

"And about five-hundred grams of cybernetic implants."

The professor glanced back at him and laughed again. "You know, I don't think I ever got your name through this, did I?"

Panfilov felt the pockets of his uniform. "Actually, they gave us these...business cards, I suppose…printed in English for this sort of thing. I have one of them somewhere." After a few seconds of checking, he managed to produce a single plain, white card with embossed printing on it, which he gave to Nemoto.

Glancing at it, he flipped it over and offered it back. "It's a good name."

"Better than 'Panfilov'?" he asked, refusing the return.

"Much better. Why didn't you give it to me?"

"You didn't ask, sir."

He pointed a finger at him. "A very good point. I'll try not to make that mistake in the future." He held back more laughter. "Here we are, a military boarding school student teaching a professor something."


End file.
